In a television interview with Alfred Hitchcock, the insufferable and loathsome Roger Ebert phoned in and, on behalf of a film student, asked: “What is the meaning of stairs in your films?” Hitchcock replied, bluntly: “I think stairs are for going up and down.”

The biggest problem with film discourse, and the atmosphere fostered by pretentious and annoying critics, is the tendency to confuse esteem with meaning. Hitchcock is so frequently and overzealously referred to as “the Master of Suspense” that even the most trivial and pedestrian aspects of his films are treated with undeserved semiotic reverence. He is imagined as a kind of King Midas with a camera, such that when he inevitably produces lead, it is reinterpreted as intentional.

Likewise, an assortment of even more pretentious academics have felt the need to huff Alfred gas and insist that the final shot of North by Northwest—a train entering a tunnel after two lovers embrace—is some kind of symbolic representation of hanky panky. It is, of course, not surprising that a film so pedestrian from such an esteemed director would invite this sort of reading, but what it really reveals is that the concept of being “porn-brained” is not a new phenomenon at all. I take great relief in knowing that my own mind is not so hopelessly preoccupied.

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